That one is about platform control. It's one thing to build a platform that only executes signed code--that's good for security--but it's another thing to refuse to give users control over who the trust authority is for their system. Apple still maintains that under lock and key effectively refusing to let you run your own software on your iPhone.

It's not that clear cut of a tradeoff. If Apple were to allow limitless sideloading of apps and that became the standard way that people installed apps on iOS devices, it would seriously limit their ability to keep the platform secure against malicious apps.

I'm not sure that's a valid concern given that Android has allowed that since its earliest days, and most people are content to just use the market.

But all you need is that one person to side load something malicious and everyone in their contacts may be compromised.

No no. I'm talking about keys to my phone alone. If I choose to trust my own certificate then that only impacts what software I can run on my phone. An app cannot "sideload itself onto all your contacts". This extends to the OS itself. Let me change the certificate governing the OS software. Only once you allow that do I truly own my phone.

2muchcoffeeman doesn’t say apps will migrate to other phones.

(S)he implies that your friend’s phone being compromised will leak data about you (email address, physical address, birth date, mails you sent, etc)

If you give your friend that data, it's out of your hands. If you don't want your email address or birthdate to be known, don't give it to anyone.

I pretty much opertate from the point of view that anything I send in an email or text is public, and temper what I write accordingly.

The problem here is social engineering. If someone says "click these buttons in your phone's settings, sideload our app, and you'll be able to do X" (where X is "pirate movies," "mine bitcoin," etc), a surprising number of people would follow the instructions, ignore any big red warnings, and end up with their device pwned. You'd need a way to make the certificate trust settings accessible only to those who know what they're doing.

Apple places their customers first and developers second. They build devices for humans, not the mutant lizard people from space who develop software.

I am a human, and I develop software. This is a moronic statement.

Gee, I was going for ironic, missed, and hit moronic. Close enough for horseshoes. :)

I've started referring to software developers (like myself) with intentional irony as "mutant lizard people" after hearing one too many times how a particular OS/tool/programming language needs to be designed "for humans" (i.e, n00bs with no prior exposure to it).

That would be a terrible idea. Isn’t that how JavaScript started?

Without that time limit, an entire black market of non-app-store software distribution could spring up, and Apple would not be able to protect little Bobby who wants an emulator from bad app actors.

The real limitation isn't "seven days", as that's not that annoying: it is that you can have at most three such apps. But frankly, that still doesn't provide much "protection" from bad apps. All it is doing is prevent all of the apps on your phone from being pirated (capping that at three), which bounds the damage from adding this feature.

So? The entire promise of computers is programability. If you can't make it do what you want it to do, you might as well just get an old nokia.

This is simply not true. You’ve been lied to, and you don’t own an iOS device to check for yourself. I’m pasting something I shared in another thread here. I have no idea where this lie came from but it seems like someone is trying to keep people away from developing apps on iOS.

I’ve written a couple personal apps that sync with health kit data collected from my Apple Watch and nutrition apps to help me track things in a way that is useful for my fitness goals. In 2016-2017 I used these apps to put on 30 lbs and stay relatively lean but I’ve never wanted to publish them in the app store. I don’t pay for any developer program. Just need to download some (free) developer tools / SDK for XCode, build the source, and put it on my phone. The install is tethered, but afterwards it stays there until I delete it. Restarting the phone doesn’t delete the app either. Only time I needed to re-install was when my 5s crapped out and I had to get a new phone.

You can compile and run your own apps though. You would need an apple developer account and pay the fee to be able to side load your own apps. There is a process that allows you to do it if you're serious about it.

Edit: Disregard my comment. I clicked the link and understand the context of your comment now. Still, if you want to code and deploy your own apps you can do it but there are conditions.

> You would need an apple developer account and pay the fee to be able to side load your own apps

You don't need to pay to deploy to your own devices these days.